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>> host: what is a black classic press? >> guest: that's a good question. on one hand where the publishers and on another word the printers. it's a good question because aside from being book publishers and book printers, where actually a vision and mission incarnate. we've existed an omission in terms of being a voice, particularly and especially for the black community for those who come before us. our mission was to bring back into print books that had long been out of print so, that's a

mission that started a number of years ago. we are that mission. >> what are some of the books he brought back? >> guest: when we started, none of the things that i wanted to do is focused on obscure books. many people not be familiar with them or with authors who had done these books. that's the point of it all. there many books that if i mentioned them but the books we focus on intensity by authors who have been lost in history. at the same time, when they were a live, people like houston who is a black woman who in 1926

wrote one of the more important pieces come as far as i'm concerned of history. for black folks. she wrote a book, it was published in 1926 and until we republished it in 1986, it had basically fallen out of memory. the importance of that and books like that is, books that we publish by parker, those books were done at a time when these people five very hard to establish a history for black folks when they were told they had no history. her contribution at the time which was one of the earliest contributions of any person writing on the history of black people it was very significant and have been lost.

our job in mission is to make sure it is not forgotten. >> host: does it hold up historically? >> guest: nothing holds up historically. that is the beautiful thing about the work we do. there many things that said her might sites, many historical things he cited for historians to live by but they had probably just as many that don't hold up. history is a narrative people tell. so in houston's clays one of the things she deals with them points out now becomes less important for me. it's less important for historians.

we want to look at is the ground they cover, what they dealt with. of course you will look at the things that still hold true with residents. in our case, particularly in with black folks, i'm looking at the resistance of people who were told constantly that you are nothing. you had no history. for a person to go back like mrs. houston and pull together three volumes of history there is narrative in there that resonates true. she is doing this work before people like carter did his. so, she is working before him. she's looking in ancient history even before do voices. it is the effort and grabbing cover, not that someone would

want to look at this today and say this is the bible for ancient history. it breaks the ground. it sets the pace for others to look at and begin their work on. that is most of the work we do. >> host: does that author hold up? >> only in the same light that mrs. houston does. that is to say, people write almost any book that has been written you'll find flaws or errors in that book that we's would say do not hold up. at the same time, you'll find things in the book that you may say let's build something on this and see what we have. he was onto something, she was onto something. she was an early investigator of

this. in that sense to voice holds up. there would be more things that he wrote that to hold up. but we can also find things that don't. he was the promoter of the talented tim. didn't taken that long. as writers, writers will write things that if they live long enough and wise enough, many times will disown them as opposed to a generation, and behind that says it doesn't hold up. have to look at writing and creating that way. there is not an absolute truth in this. at the same time, there are truths to be explained and held onto that are important for us

to look at and build on. >> host: was mrs. houston at new york at the time? >> this is so important. mrs. houston actually lived at this time she lived in oklahoma city. in houston, and i'm sure you're familiar with many of the black towns founded in oklahoma. her father and family had gone to oklahoma with the promise of there being more freedom in oklahoma. so there is an establishment of black towns. she was an educator and opened a school and she taught school in oklahoma and in tulsa issues there doing during the tulsa bombing.

she writes i thank god on this day to not have a son. because if i had a son i would have sent out to war. as the bombs rained down the first city that american planes actually bombed, she was prepared, in her mind to resist. in her thinking god was a statement of that. on one hand you have this woman who in my mind is a warrior ready to go to war. on the other hand you have her being a warrior resisting the notion that so much of the world used to justify enslavement of black people. if you can get rid of the history of black people the nucleus label. then there no more than horses or cattle.

>> host: you also print first-run books? >> guest: we do. we have done a few. it's not my passion. my passion and as i say that, we currently have two or three first-run original books. but my passion if you want to get me started that's what gets me up in the morning. there are so many ancestors, people should be clear, we publish books that i'm talking about are by and about people of african dissent. they're not necessarily books written only by black people. there are number of white writers who courageously stood like mrs. houston stood and even

before. these people knew that the lives of blacks being enslaved and they would vote against. in these people we celebrate. it's about people of african dissent. that's what gets me started in the morning. i like good books. but there are so many publishers that have capabilities beyond ours. experiences beyond ours that i regularly send writers to because talent equates that. my mission is different. >> what is the process of finding a writer like mrs. houston whose in the original publisher? >> when people think so

publisher they think it's something new. it's not. people like whitman and other folks published books on their own. mrs. houston was following in that tradition. she came from a family, her brother was a newspaperman and she was a newspaper woman and they work together to establish a newspaper. in this case, she is publishing her work. were talking about 1926. you won't find histories on black people in the ancient world. very much at all during that time. that's because of the universal denial of black history going

beyond and not a civilized history going in lake west africa. you talk about them not having a history. the market that publishing was not available. people like rogerson they cried for publishers to pick up his work. he was one of the people that did tremendous genealogical work. he was interested in publishing. in black blood in the white race. at the time it was white blood in the black race. he went the other way. he did studies and research,

u.s. how do you get these books? i used to be a bookseller and people would come to me all the time. it remains fascinating to me, i did not know about rogers, did not know about other self train people come i didn't know about john clark when i was in the bookstore, i learned about mrs. houston, i learned about people like rogers because i was supply books to people in jail. people in the jails would send their relatives to the bookstore and say, to have this book and they had no idea what was. after doing research, i do find these people. they would send messages saying

you're probably not be a will find it because they really don't want the truth out there. so i would do the research and i would find the book. the truth was, there is no economic basis for anyone to publish these books. it's not the way people didn't want books out there, there is no economic model that would support the publishing of the books. and that then became part of the mission. recognizing this, the idea that it cannot be brought to press because it wasn't economical just frustrated me. let me from the bookstore into the publishing. i found tons of them.

i've been doing this work almost 40 years. i haven't come close to scratching the surface of the books i would like to publish. >> is it economically viable? >> no. now for those companies. and i knew looking at the model it requires so many readers it requires a type of interest. reprinting books doesn't work very well as a model unless you have a ton out there. in our case, when a decision was that whatever we publish wasn't going to be driven by the economics. what the deciding factor would

be, is how it resonated here. that was based on knowing the information was not known. i used to travel and still travel with a bunch of people who know a lot about history. her name initially there people who lived in history and most people did not know she was. that in itself tells me that information has to be in the world. same thing with parker who did a small thing and 17 with eastern civilization. you might ask, does that hold up? some of it doesn't some of it doesn't.

but a black man in 1917, he got no history. in 1917, he pulls together enough sources that he can argue that in fact, not only is there and african presence but an african origin. it does hold up in the sense that most writers that have looked at that uses some of the same sources he uses. it's one of the reasons in our case and i say today every formed a printing company about 20 years ago, 1996 or little bit more than that. that printing company allows us and gives us from being economical with the publisher.

it allows us to print books for other people and print our books. we have been able to survive. >> this is the other part of the company. we actually work for a living. so we were publishing books. right now working on a large j job. we are cutting books as a part of a contract. so, all of this is focused on printing the books right now. so when you get it in the scene like this the book but binder it looks like a expensive machine. what is it to.

>> these are covers, he's affixing the cover to the body of the book. so there take events you can see that she's dropping books into the machine, it covers this back here and will circle around and they come off here. >> i wanted these machines to? this one terms out the book. so once it's bound actually sends out. so it does the trim outs on the book. when we deal with all different sizes of books. this machine prints the cover

that we use. so, it prints all of the covers. they were printed on this machine as well. these other machines are committed to printing the text of the books. >> we do not to the typesetting. you want to decide what you're good at, where your strengths are. our strengths lie in the painting. there's so many people that can do the typesetting, when we are working with companies it will usually send us a completed file. they have exactly what they want now we have to do is print it.

it's a seamless process. >> publishing on demand. >> the difference of publishing on-demand usually a find that there are printers that will do one title or one book, another book operation is set up for that. were set up to do short runs very quickly. so if you ten or 50 bucks, if you 200 or 500. if you ask me to do one book now and one book later, that's more than on-demand printing companies. there are companies that do that work. most companies are going to do the short run.

>> host: how did you end up in the book world? was it purposeful or accidental? >> it was purposeful. it was not my intention. to do it, purposeful in the sense that my history goes back to the black panther party. from the black panther party i knew that i wanted to engage with what i thought was the best aspects of the black panther party and that was community work, building in the black community, and the other aspect that i became connected to was working in the prisons. in the prisons i saw charges that i might go to prison.

i had other people in the black panther party with me who were imprisoned. one of the things i did was disconnected from the black panther party. i created a prison program. that prison program has three aspects. the first was the bookstore. that bookstore was intended to get books into the jail. books that would help increase the awareness and consciousness of the black people. they had gone to jail and educated himself and have become devoted and committed to the community. we had malcolm x. as a model where gone to jail as a petty

criminal. i still feel in the jails today. knowing that self-education is one tool to transform people in jail. that was connected as a vision and publishing company. they would publish books for those so throughout the black community and be sold and move through the jails. then there was, printing company. that is what we created when we came out of the black panther party. i have been fortunate enough i talk about the mission.

i have been fortunate enough to see those phases manifest themselves the bookstore which i closed the publishing company which was actually 1978 i close the bookstore down and open the publishing company. the publishing company and printing company almost 20 years later when i was thinking about the printing company, at that time you had a multimillion dollar plan. you had 40 people on staff and things like that. you had no idea how that would work. but i imagined it in the same sense like people with frederick douglass and martin delaney.

people who my ancestors resisted but to be a voice with a black community. and to direct that in a resisted way so that consciousness created in the black community could restore that and build that. that's what i attempted to do. >> why did julie the black panther party? >> the easiest way to say it is it was time. that doesn't give you information. i left the black panther party at a time that the party was transitioning into something else. the interesting thing is that i

was a defense captain in baltimore. i went out to california because i probably had ten people in baltimore under charges were in jail. but there people facing life sentences who are i believe to be facing those life sentences. they had promised legal help. we'll talk about it get some support in that never happened. were waiting to talk to get legal support back here and it never happened. it just read reached the point i realized i was in the wrong place with the wrong people.

i left and came back. i was disconnected. when i left the black panther party was at the center of activism. coming back, i was totally disconnected from that and confused. i have four children and one on the way at that point. i was totally disconnected. the vision cap may connected. people in the community would stop me a say you're not with the panthers, what are you going to do? there was that kind of drive after leaving the panther party, the confusion and grounding myself in the work in the jails help me clear up or i was. granting myself in the work of

the bookstore helped ground me. it helped save me. >> is that book program for the jails still available? >> no. it did not last that long either. that original idea ran into two forms of opposition that crippled the idea. sometimes it goes back any wonder didn't hold up. but inside it was some good things that we can build off of. the fact that were looking in our 40th year to build off of. iran into two things that were stopping. one, the state of maryland

through a blockade to the free literature that we were given to the jails. these are not political tracks. some of the books were textbooks that were going to the jail. they will pay block in part because the fbi still had a thing and we are working with panthers inside the jail. we had an opposition and got stopped at. for the books we did get into the jails, in jail you do not have a lot. so you gravitate toward centers of power. one central power was the collective of distributing the book. sometimes people would use it as commodity to buy cigarettes. which i understood.

that was -- not to come up with a better one we are in the process of reworking it through. the bookstore work in the publishing company of conducting the books into the jail, that was different. now, having said that, one of our largest constituencies is people incarcerated. we still send books into the jail but they are sold. we send them and sometimes and people are incarcerated and don't have money we will send books as long as they make an effort. so if you say don't have $10 but i have a dollar, i'll send you

the book. that goes back to the whole thing of doing herself. the early notion was just to send books into the jail. i believe especially books and things you want, you do what you need to do to get them. even if you don't have $10 people say i have a postage to's. but at least you are willing to spend something that you had a value in exchange for something that i had a value. that means you really want it. . .

>> i wasn't actually doing anything. but when i i was in the party one time we were moving guns. legitimate. if you have rifles you can move the rifles. so then we got arrested. and the charge was i had 15 attempted murder charges out of that.

when i came out i came out i had a rifle in my hand they could arrest me but they cannot make the charges stick so they dismissed them. so there was any number of charges from attempted murder down to parking one time i was arrested because my car was parked in the wrong place. i know how they did that but i i was arrested. i was arrested one time for practicing law without a license and there was no law in maryland about practicing law without a license and the judge finally had to let me out after i was there three or four hours because there was no law. and what had happened is one of the panthers was in court and he looked to me for advice. i know a little bit.

so he looked to me and i nodded my head. back at him and he said yes or something and the judge said who are you? what do you have to do with this? if you say something else i will arrest you i had not said anything mind you but practicing without a license. arrest that man. so i i was never really tried in front of a jury but now i am

writing. but i am at i am a fact to follow. mice and is a tremendous writer he won a pulitzer in the national book award. i love it. he sets a high standard that i have i have to, to one day that right now it isn't so much because of him but there is a story to tell i think but it is important to my grandchildren that story be known. my children have heard that over and over but now i focused at

this point and at the urging of mosley and who enrolled me in that possibility he only writes two hours a day. i said i will do one hour. he has been a great friend and coach to me with my writing. >> as you write your autobiography or your experience are you writing one hour a day?? >> most days. >> most days i'm able to get it. so that name comes from london so guy by the name that was

called cannon and he was alive at the time and then i came to know him. and that was mysterious. and we are friends enough to become a publisher. and publishes his own books. so i was in i wasn't the publisher when he was born but his books deal with the consciousness of black people it is a combination. so because they had to put his

name on the birth certificate but then said i'm glad you called i'm headed to the hospital and he said i looked at these two names he said the name him tana hasse he will need a strong name. so the land of the blacks from the black land distilled the interpretive land but the people who were located somewhere around sudan.

and then as they began to write he could never remember his name. >> was he the only writer at this point? >> actually i have nine children and two of them are through marriage my last acquisition. i have seven biological children but i have nine. but the kids always use to write but his younger sister or his older sister, i'm sorry she use to have the notebooks full of writing and writing. but tana hasse he used to do

some rap and went to college and he hung out with a tremendous group of young poets at that howard and they helped to shape him and he hung out with the howard experience i think that really shaped his writing. i watched his i watched his writing over that. but i think his mother appreciated him much more than i did. she actually bought an early book of his poetry. he writes about him being a bad poet. i think he is a very good poet. but the people who he hung out with he felt were much better. but he published a chat book together and his mother brought it to me to print for him. he didn't know it but i read it

closely and i felt his power in his poetry and this would have been 20 some odd years ago and then at the city paper really to become a sensation under david carr under his tutelage even at the city paper. he did a front page he'd only been there about two months. so so i'm saying all this to say and to always see the power. and it printed the book. that would not have been my mission. and your question because people

always ask are you going to published on a hasse? did you? and i don't i don't know the answers to that. we came close to doing the preparations. >> i wanted to do that as a standalone however eight years in power was born chris jackson his editor they got together so that article became a part of that book and that is perfect. so we came close to re-publishing that but i don't know about his original work i actually sent tom a a hasse his

first book in the world and me it became the beautiful struggle. it didn't have did have a title but the first book was a beautiful struggle but at the time he and i discussed it was just some essays. but the thought is he didn't need to publish a book with me she needed to be at a commercial publisher that could support his work that a small a small black press like ours could not also make it pay him an advance which he deserved that he needed that advance and i cannot pay him that.

if i publish the work it could be a vanity job because i'm publishing because he's my son. looking into the commercial world to be out there with everyone else and that is the best of the world i don't know i i sat on the board for many years and even though that part of the foundation, i cannot imagine that she might have been a candidate that has never been a a hard thing to do. he made it that way. >> between the world and me and eight years in power.

>> that is a question i would have to say the same thing if you look at dickens those are just so powerful and then say why is he doing this? it doesn't matter it is the way with lite it doesn't matter it is the way with literature there are elements that you like and elements that you don't and there are pieces that will criticize today and still be criticized 50 years later but with eight years in power to do a critique of himself. that just verifies the point. there is the absolute truth.

that is not the unchanging body of four canned ideas. there may be a truth in them. with that power goes more that is in the context of their creation. so what they indicate and what you suggest and those ideas so 50 years from 50 years from now or 100 years from now and that they inspire that generation that's what's important. >> your two youngest children come to use somebody in the community says what should i

read what comes out of your mouth? it depends. maybe malcolm x. i would say that about malcolm x. or george wells parker. it is called children of the sun. and those who have to read and engage. and then to be more in fatted. and that is an opportunity to

introduce them to a grounding in black history that normally they would have access to. but certainly would introduce them to tana hasse and i have done i have done that as an access point but it really depends one of the first questions is what are you reading there what are you interested in now? i could send you to a comic book but those are a a grade access point for people to read. probably you already have this but we just want to develop from the access point. how do we get them to that point?

and as a great consumer but what do you do if they don't? and the comic books with that sensibility today because they were mine. i was reading comic books long before any other riders. >> that there is a connection to the black panthers. >> and in his youth by that time looking at his reading to make sure that and children will get a grounding in american history. there is a bit of grounding in

there. black history or native american history or asian-american or latino they don't get that grounding. that is. that is the opportunity for the expansion of our children and that doesn't necessarily happen in schools i don't know if you can demand that but as a parent it is incumbent to expand on their curiosity and to commit nine -- two -- two other people in the world. >> do you think there should be separate sections for black history or native american history? >> that section doesn't bother me i know what bothers some people. i don't really care.

they just need to be there. and i think when you go into a store that is where the problem is for me. i know some people say mix them together or mix the genre but i don't really care but if i go into a bookstore i am looking to be informed. and if their information follows a narrow path then i feel let down i don't care where i am. if i am in a french bookstore i want to be in a french bookstore. don't get me wrong because my reading of french is poor but but for example. i would want to have an expanded experience of the world because that's what i think they should do.

>> paul coates founder and director of black classic press. >> if they come back and see america today and see the most important play on broadway over the past several years is a play that lionize is alexander hamilton and vilifies jefferson and ignores thomas paine and to see them out distribution of wealth in the united states and the amount of money that suffuses american politics today , they would fear that many of these things going on in the

united states today bore an uncanny resemblance to the england they had refolded again again -- revolted agated against again -- revolted against. >> we are excited to have c-span here in hawaii so we can share the history and the culture this is a great opportunity to show people hawaii welcome and a low-cost. >> welcome to the cable satellite public affairs network and we are going all over our nation.

and they will enjoy the sunshine and the loja from the state i am sure c-span will witness this experience as it embarks on its discovery of hawaii as part of its 50 capitals to her. as the lieutenant governor we do hereby proclaim august 15 through the 22nd, 2018 is, 2018 is c-span week in hawaii. >> welcome to the richard nixon library and yorba linda california.